Happy Birthday to Me!!

It was my birthday today! I’m now 38 years old. If I want to leave an impression on the world before I die, I have less than 50 years left to do it in. Assuming I get the chance to die of old age instead of being run over, blasted by a nuclear missile, stabbed to death, fallen victim to cancer, lost the fight to my own occasionally suicidal thoughts, or a meteorite impacts the earth and kills everyone.

A little dramatic and negative for my birthday perhaps, but it’s still a thought I have. I’m not going to mope about it, or wring my hands worrying about it. I’m going to get things done! I’ve already started adding weekly updates to my work-in-progress on ‘The Haunted Story’, and created a new Patreon page to help gain support for it.

For those that don’t know I wrote a short ghost story called ‘The Haunted Story’. S0 many people liked it I decided to expand on the premise. The short story was renamed ‘Dead Letter‘, the first story in the haunted series. The story I’m working on now is called ‘Investigation’ and you can read parts 1, 2 and 3 by following the links, or by going up to the tab labelled ‘The Haunted Story’ above.

The basic premise is that Mark Anderson has studied ghosts and decided to deliberately become one. He aims to increase the strength of his manifestation by binding his soul to the story of his traumatic death and subsequent ghostly apparition. Anyone that hears the story will become haunted by him. ‘Dead Letter‘ sets up this premise, having been written as if it was the note found with Mark Anderson’s grotesquely mutilated body.

‘Investigation’ follows Detective Janet Burrows. A homicide detective who has been assigned to the case and told to treat it as a murder case, despite the suicide note. Given the horrific nature of Mark Anderson’s death, it seems highly unlikely he did it to himself. Janet needs to find his killer, but the prime suspect seems terrified of something no-one else can see, and he kills himself shortly afterward. Then she begins to see things herself.

If you think this sounds right up your alley, please follow my progress and let me know what you like, and don’t like, about the story so far. If you can show your support by becoming a patron, you’ll get email notifications whenever there’s an update, and a signed free copy of the book when it’s published. If you can’t afford to do that, you can also buy the Kindle ebook version of The Haunted Story: Dead Letter on Amazon for just 99c. A review would also be greatly appreciated.

You can still check back every Saturday to see what I’ve added the night before, even if you’re not able to contribute financially to the project. Your feedback and encouragement would be very helpful and just a valuable to me as any monetary donations. You can also help me immensely by inviting others to this website to check out my work, and sharing ‘The Haunted Story’ with them.

Don’t worry, Mark Anderson’s ghost isn’t going to show up and scare you to death. You and those you share it with have nothing to fear. It’s just a story. 😉

My writing career isn’t the only thing I’m taking positive action on. I need to make some friends in this town. I love my family, but it’d be nice to get out of the house and play some games or just hang out with people on my wavelength.

I realised during a conversation online that I was unlikely to find fellow geeks in the local pubs. We’d be far more likely to be at home, online. Luckily, the town I’ve been living in since January has a Facebook group in which the townsfolk post public notices and ask each for favours and recommendations. So I made a post of my own, asking for help finding geeky new friends.

The response I got was amazing, and we soon had our own separate Facebook group with 40 members and a meeting scheduled in one of the local pubs I’d helped out as an odd-jobber! I’m looking forward to the first meeting, and getting to know some of the local geeks and gamers.

If you happen to be from Kidwelly in Wales, and a fan of Star Wars, Star Trek, Lord of The Rings, the MCU, Rick and Morty, Supernatural, Doctor Who, video games, tabletop games and anything else even remotely geeky, feel free to join Games and Geekery of Kidwelly and come along to our first meeting on 7th May at the Masons Arms. It should be fun 🙂

I bought this game to bring

This card game was one of my presents

I also got these as a birthday gift.

My birthday was fun. I got to play the card game ‘Bears and Babies‘ with my nieces, and to spend time with my sister. For my next birthday though, I hope the have a reasonable circle of friends I can share it with, and possibly be able to afford to buy my friends and family awesome presents when all their birthdays roll around.

Thanks for reading. I appreciate your continued interest in my writing and my life.